W. W. Butt

My parents were Jacob Butt and Lavina Murphy, both born in Athens, Ohio.  Father was a farmer and stockman.  there were five children in our family.

I was born June 12, 1851 in Nelsonville, Ohio came to Logan County in 1890 from Texas.  I came on the train by the way of Gainesville, Texas to Oklahoma City.  My step-son had staked a claim three miles east of Britton, in 1889 and I moved on this claim to improve it for him.  I built a good frame house with a basement and broke the land and planted corn.  We raised horses and some cattle.  We cut and baled hay for winter use.  The first year was very difficult.  We had little money and we had not raised a crop, so it was hard to get food.  We had to go to Oklahoma City for groceries and there was only a trail to follow.  Oklahoma City was only a tent town at that time.  We had to ship our cattle to Kansas City or St; Louis which were our nearest markets.

I lived here two years and moved to Cloud Chief in the Comanche-Arapaho Reservation, southeast of Cordell.  Here I went into the general mercantile business with a man named Brock.  Our store was in a large tent.  There were no Negroes allowed in this community except the one who worked for me.

While I was here, J. C. Hofice was appointed county attorney with headquarters at Cloud Chief.  He was a Republican and those Democrats from Texas were strongly opposed to him.  He couldn't find anyone who would rent him office space.  He came to me with tears in his eyes and I let him have a corner of our tent store for an office.  It was here that I first met Dennis Flynn.  He was running for Congress and came in to see Mr. Hofice, who introduced Mr. Flynn and me saying I was "one of the best Democratic friends he had".

I moved to Wynnewood in 1892 and was a collector for the Crump Mercantile Company for many years.  I drove a two wheeled cart and went for many miles in every direction.  Those were dangerous times for a collector.  There were many thieves and outlaws and I was afraid to travel, even in the daylight.

One day as I was driving though Bird Ashton's ranch, I encountered an outlaw named White.  Just as I drove into Guy Sandy Creek, he was putting a freshly butchered hog into a sack.  He had stolen the hog and butchered it here in the creek bed. He ordered me to move on and I did as quickly as possible.

I moved to Sulphur in 1905 and put in an ice plant.  I ordered my ice from St. Louis and the One Hundred Ton Plant at Dennison, Texas.

There was no park here when I moved.  There were only springs, at which people, both Indians and whites, would camp and drink the waters.  The cowboys called Bromide Springs, The Salt Springs.

The cave near the springs was inhabited by panthers which caught the calves on the ranches nearby.  Colonel Froman had a large ranch house hear the Gum Springs and I built a small house near this springs.

Senator Platt of New York drafted a bill setting aside eight hundred acres of land around these springs for a national park.  Hence the park was called Platt National Park.

When I first came to Sulphur, there was a telephone line from Sulphur to Davis.  This line was the top barbed wire of the fence along the road.  There was no telephone wire used except across the roads.  This line ran east and west and where a north and south road crossed it, there was a high post on the east and west side. A telephone wire was tied to the barbed wire on each side extending across the road on these high posts.

I was married to Laura Lewis in 1873.  We are the parents of one girl and one boy.

Transcribed by Dennis Muncrief,  December,  2000.